Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Summary of Findings…………………………………………………………………………………….2 Aggregated Graphs………………………………………………………………………………………3 2007 Features……………………………………………………………………………………3 2006 vs. 2007 Features…………………………………………………………………………4 Newspaper Features vs. Magazine Features, 2007………………………………………....5 Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………………6 Individual Graphs…………………………………………………………………………………………8 RSS………………………………………………………………………………………………..8 Blogs………………………………………………………………………………………………9 Interaction with Readers……………………………………………………………………….10 Media…………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Alternative Content Views……………………………………………………………………..12 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………...13 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………………....13
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I. Introduction As a corollary to the most recent installment of The Bivings Group’s media studies, “America’s Newspapers and the Internet: Threat or Opportunity?”, The Bivings Group conducted the following research on the 50 most circulated commercial magazines in the United States. By analyzing the websites of these publications and comparing the results with last year’s examination of magazine websites, we can evaluate the degree to which America’s magazines are improving their use of the Internet and Web 2.0 tools. In this study, our researchers evaluated magazine websites based on the presence or lack of 15 unique Web features. These results indicate that across nearly all the categories, America’s magazines are making better use of the Internet than they were last year. However, magazines still lag significantly in their use of the Web when compared to America’s newspapers. II. Summary of Findings • Sixty-four percent of the magazine websites researched offer RSS feeds. Forty-four percent of the websites have unique feeds for different sections, while no websites embed advertisements in their RSS feeds. Thirty-one of these feeds (97 percent) are partial feeds, while Time magazine offers full text RSS feeds. Eighteen percent of the websites 1 offer a “most popular” feature, which shows the most read, most emailed or most commented stories each day. Thirty-four percent of the websites have content for mobile devices, showing a 20 percent improvement since 2006. Video usage nearly doubled in 2007, with 60 percent of the magazine websites we researched now offering video content. In 2006, just 34 percent of the websites offered this feature. The use of message boards remained nearly constant compared to 2006 results. Nearly half (48 percent) of magazine websites are now using forums or message boards on their sites. The usage of required registration increased since last year from 38 percent to 42 percent. Bookmarking increased substantially in 2007. Thirty-six percent of magazine websites now offer bookmarking features, compared to just 14 percent in 2006. Fifteen websites (30 percent) use external bookmarking, such as del.icio.us, three websites (six percent) use internal bookmarking, and just one website, Sports Illustrated, uses both internal and external bookmarking features. Tagging was the only category to decrease in 2007. While three magazines used tag clouds in 2006, just two publications, Parenting and US Weekly are currently offering tag clouds on their websites.
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Throughout the study, reference to “magazines” in general refers only to the 50 magazines analyzed in our research, not the entire grouping of American magazines as a whole.
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More magazines are using reporter blogs in 2007 than in 2006. Fifty-eight percent of the magazines researched now offer reporter blogs on their sites, compared to just 40 percent in 2006. Ninety three percent of these blogs allow reader comments, while just 31 percent use blogrolls, or links to external blogs. Newspapers fared better than magazines in nearly every category in 2007. The only exception is the use of tags; four percent of magazines use tags compared to just one percent of newspapers.
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Aggregated Graphs
The following graphs demonstrate these findings. More detailed graphs follow.
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III. Methodology
The Bivings Group researched and analyzed the websites of the top 50 commercial magazines in America, based on circulation figures from the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) 2 for 2006. To determine the degree to which these magazines are using the Internet, we evaluated their sites based on the presence or absence of the following elements: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
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RSS Feed: Does the website offer an RSS feed? If yes, is it a full or partial feed? Note that this does not consider RSS feeds for reporter blogs, only for the newspaper’s content. RSS Feed for Different Sections: If the website offers RSS, does it divide the feeds into different sections? RSS Feed Includes Ads: If the website offers RSS, do the feeds include ads? Most Popular: Does the website offer a “Most Popular” function? This can be any feature that keeps track of and displays the “most popular”, “most read”, or “most emailed” articles, blog posts, or media pieces of the day. Video: Does the website offer video content? Podcast: Does the website offer podcasts? Tags: Does the website use tags to search and organize articles? Reporter Blogs: Does the website offer reporter blogs? Reporter Blog Comments: If the website has reporter blogs, can readers comment on the blogs? Blogroll: If the website has reporter blogs, do the blogs contain links to external blogs? Mobile Version: Does the site offer an alternative version or content designed to be viewed on mobile devices? Comments on Articles: Can users post comments on articles? Registration Required: Is registration required to view articles? If so, is registration free or paid? Bookmarking: Does the website offer a bookmarking function? Is it internal (i.e. save the article on the website) or external (i.e. send the article to a del.icio.us account). Message Boards: Does the website offer message boards or forums?
Circulation data can be found at this URL: http://www.magazine.org/circulation/circulation_trends_and_magazine_handbook/22175.cfm
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The list of magazines we researched can be viewed in Appendix 1. We omitted several of the publications in the MPA’s top 50 from our research. These magazines included Playboy, whose content we considered inappropriate for professional research; various AARP and AAA publications, which we did not consider commercial publications; Woman’s World, which did not have a website, and First for Women, which only offers subscription services rather than content online. To make up for omitting these publications, we extended our research to the top 57 magazines, although we only researched 50 publications in total. Data collected from the magazine websites was obtained during the period August 1 through August 15, 2007, and thus represents a snapshot in time rather than evolving trends.
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IV. Individual Graphs 1. RSS
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2. Blogs
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3. Interaction with Readers
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4. Media
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5. Alternative Content Viewing
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6. Conclusions It is evident from the results expressed in this study that magazines are slower to adopt Web 2.0 than newspapers. It can be hypothesized that this is due to two specific factors. The first factor to consider is the purpose of both magazines and newspapers. Both are print publications with long histories in American media, however, they mostly serve distinct purposes. Whereas newspapers are an essential source of news and daily information for many Americans, magazines tend to be sources of entertainment. Therefore, one can surmise that it is essential for newspapers to provide functional applications on their websites in order to enable Americans to get news in their desired format. In contrast, magazine websites can afford to be geared toward the casual “surfer” and people browsing for interesting content. The differing cultures of newspapers and magazines have definitely affected the way in which these publications use the Internet. A second factor that must be considered is the audience of these two types of publications. Newspapers, while their demographics are becoming increasingly dominated by older Americans, have appeal to all age groups. Newspaper websites expand on this general appeal by reaching out to Internet-savvy portions of the American population. Audience demographics cannot be generalized in this manner for magazines: for these publications, audiences differ greatly from publication to publication. For example, the portion of American reading Teen People is probably quite different than the segment reading a publication such as Newsweek. Therefore, we can expect that the adoption of certain Web features by magazine websites will vary between publications (depending on the audience), while the adoption of Web 2.0 by newspaper websites is occurring at a more universal and general pace. In addition, we can expect that the pressure on magazines to “change their ways” is less forceful than the pressure facing newspapers. Many experts in the newspaper industry fear the evolution of the Internet and theorize that newspapers must either “change or die” 3—either leverage the Internet or face being replaced by it. In contrast, it is unlikely that magazines, complete with their glossy photos, eye-catching headlines and tangible qualities could actually be replaced by the Internet. Thus, their positioning in the entertainment industry and inherent differences from newspapers give magazines a bit of a buffer from pressures to shift their focus to the Web, something that newspapers are beginning to struggle with more and more.
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Cliff Peale, “Newspapers Pin Survival Hopes on User Content”, The Cincinnati Enquirer Online, June 27, 2007, http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070627/BIZ01/706270332/1076.BIZ
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APPENDIX The following is a list of the magazines researched in this year’s survey. Circulation data for these publications can be found on the Magazine Publishers of America website. 4
Average Total Paid & Verified Circulation for Top 100 ABC Magazines 2006
2006 Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
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Publication Name AARP THE MAGAZINE AARP BULLETIN READER'S DIGEST BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GOOD HOUSEKEEPING LADIES' HOME JOURNAL TIME-THE WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE WOMAN'S DAY FAMILY CIRCLE PEOPLE AAA WESTWAYS TV GUIDE PREVENTION SPORTS ILLUSTRATED NEWSWEEK PLAYBOY COSMOPOLITAN SOUTHERN LIVING VIA MAGAZINE MAXIM AAA GOING PLACES AMERICAN LEGION MAGAZINE AAA LIVING REDBOOK GUIDEPOSTS O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE GLAMOUR GAME INFORMER MAGAZINE AAA WORLD PARENTS SMITHSONIAN U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT SEVENTEEN
http://www.magazine.org/circulation/circulation_trends_and_magazine_handbook/22175.cfm
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35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
ESPN THE MAGAZINE MARTHA STEWART LIVING REAL SIMPLE MONEY PARENTING FAMILYFUN MEN'S HEALTH ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY US WEEKLY IN STYLE COOKING LIGHT ENDLESS VACATION SHAPE COUNTRY LIVING GOLF DIGEST VFW MAGAZINE FITNESS WOMAN'S WORLD STAR MAGAZINE HOME & AWAY SELF SUNSET TEEN PEOPLE FIRST FOR WOMEN FIELD & STREAM ROLLING STONE
Titles shaded in gray indicate publications that are in the top 50 circulated magazines in the US but were not included in our study. For an explanation of this, please see the Methodology section of this report.
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